Edge and Data Adaptive Equalization of Serial-Link Transceivers

Limited channel bandwidth introduces inter-symbol interference (ISI) at both data and edge samples. In addition to the ISI at data samples, ISI at the edge samples (edge ISI) increases the bit error rate (BER) by degrading on the eye diagram and increasing the jitter of the clock and data recovery (CDR). This work proposes a forward FIR equalizer and a decision-feedback equalizer (DFE) that compensate for both data and edge samples. To adapt both the data and edge equalizers, a modified LMS adaptation algorithm is introduced to achieve convergence. A transmitter and receiver are implemented in 0.13 mum and 0.18 mum technologies respectively. The edge ISI is improved by 20% and the jitter is improved by 10% in measurement. The link operates over a 120^´´ FR4 channel with 24 dB attenuation at Nyquist frequency, and the BER is below 10^-14 at 3.6 Gb/s.